Unusual Escape
by amongthewinged
Summary: Cadel's stuck. He's caught, and has no way out. So he calls on a friend to help. One of his more unusal friends.
1. Out of Ideas

_Random idea i had. Hope you enjoy._

**Disclaimer:** No,I do not own Evil Genius. i was totall lost like every one else.

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Cadel leaned back in the luxurious bed and sighed. There was nothing he could do. His brain was exhausted, he had reached the dead end. The unsolvable problem, like the one that had shut down Brendan.

More precisely, he was in a state of shock. Thaddeus, his _father_? But for some reason, it all made sense. Why Thaddeus had been so kind to him, why he had never really connected with Darkkon. Why they looked nothing alike.

But it didn't change a thing. He was still getting away. He was escaping, leaving all the manipulation, the secrets, the constant surveillance, the fear embedded in everything.

He raised a hand and laid it on his forehead. He looked down, like he was exhausted. Tired. No one would notice that his little finger bushed the inside of his ear, activating the tiny earpiece that had escaped Max's notice. It buzzed to life.

"Anna?" He whispered, hoping that her claims about the piece being able to detect vibrations were true.

"Thank god, Cadel. I was beginning to think you were dead." Anna's familiar voice came from the piece. She sounded like her usual frank self. How she managed to be unruffled through this entire thing was beyond him.

"You here?"

"Right off shore. Roth has a nice house. Nice fence around it." He heard her tapping away at a keyboard. She whistled. "If he had a nice fence, he has _excellent_ surveillance. And that's not a term I use lightly. But I'm far enough away." The fence had to be at least twelve feet high and solid stone, all the way up to the cliff.

"Are you in a boat?" He asked, startled.

"Come on, Cadel. Did you seriously think I wouldn't own a boat, being who I am?"

"Well, yeah. Not like you would need one." Anna had had her way paid through Axis Institute for her unusual flair for genetics, specifically manipulation. Not most teens had grown wings on their pet snake in their high school laboratory. But what Darkkon hadn't know was she hadn't been the only one in her family that liked to tamper with DNA. Her father had experimented on his daughter with weird results. To put it nicely, she was an excellent swimmer.

"Do you have an y ideas to get me out of here?" Cadel was ashamed to ask. He was, after all, admitting defeat.

Anna laughed. "Better yet, I have a way to make sure they don't try to come after you for a while." For some reason the laugh made him nervous.

"Do tell."

"Cadel," She said dramatically, "We are going to fake your death."

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OK, so it's short. I know. But I didn't want to head off on a totall different theme in the same chapter blah blah blah.

the next one will be longer. I promise.

Reviews welcomed as always. Good reviews appreciated.


	2. Anna's History part 1

This happens a couple months before the first chapter. Just going back to tell more about Anna.

**Diclaimer: I do not own Evil Genius.**

Anna's History: Part One

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Anna's History: Part 1

Anna's trouble started almost immediately. Their group was waiting outside lecture hall one waiting for Thaddeus when raised voices made all their head turn. Or rather, one raised voice.

"They asked me to bring a sample of my work. Well, I did as they asked." The group looked around the corner to the security in front of the door.

A girl was standing by the x ray machine, one hand laid possessively on a bug carrier, on of the clear plastic kind. Through the walls Cadel could see the shimmering loops of a snake. It had the distinctive orange pattern of a corn snake. Relatively harmless.

The girl ran a hand through her short sandy blonde hair. She was of medium height and had a small pointed nose.

One of the twins giggled. The girl turned to glare at them. One of her eyes was a chocolate brown, the other a clear sky blue. The twins giggled harder.

Cadel would have recognized her from her file even without the giveaway eyes. Annabelle Mallan was the daughter of a brilliant geneticist. Her father had been awarded several awards for his work, most of which had been revoked when it had been discovered that he had been experimenting on humans.

It appeared that his daughter had inherited most of his skill. She had been discovered by his dad when the high school she had been attending raised a fuss because she had used her dad's workshop to splice DNA from one of the class snakes eggs. When the eggs had hatched it was discovered that one of the babies had mysteriously grown a pair of wings. One of the teachers reported having seen Annabelle slip into the classroom on multiple occasions. The final evidence in the schools case that Annabelle had been performing experiments without approval appeared when the teacher of her advanced biology class, the one who always complained she was too smart for the class, walked in on her taking a sample of the babies blood.

Cadels dad had decided that anyone who could manipulate DNA as a senior in high school had great potential.

"No pets allowed." The security guard grunted.

"It's not a pet!" Annabelle exclaimed. "It's an experimental subject. NOT a pet."

"It looks like a snake."

"That's because it _is_ a snake." Annabelle pointed out, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"All animals are to be delivered directly to the labs, and only to the labs."

"Un-un. You think I'm letting you scientist get their hands on Flitter and dissect him or something like that? I don't think so."

The guard opened his mouth to argue when his phone beeped. He frowned and flipped it open. Annabelle crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently on the floor.

"Fine. Go on."

Annabelle grabbed a back pack and picked up the carrier. The group gathered in front of the door pulled back quickly before she came around the corner. Annabelle glared at all of them in turn and sat down on the bench across from the lecture hall doors. She dropped the backpack on the floor with a clunk and gently settled the carrier on her lap.

"Who are you?" Clive asked bluntly.

"Anna." Was her curt response. She didn't even lift her eyes from the snake. Cadel knew Anna must be her nickname.

"What's wrong with your eyes?" One of the twins asked with a giggle.

"Nothing. What's wrong with your face?" Anna finally looked up. "Oh, I'm sorry, that must be your nose." The twins scowled.

"What are you studying?" Cadel asked just to be nice, though he already knew.

"You were listening. What do you think?" Seeing their blank stares Anna rolled her eyes. "Mutation, with a little bit of explosives on the side."

"Why explosives?" Gazo wheezed.

"Because I'm practical." Anna defiantly had a different sense of humor. She sighed. "Because you never know when you're going to have to jury-rig something to get out of a sticky situation." She explained in an overly patient voice. She unlatched the carrier and lifted the snake out. Some of their classmates actually shrank back a little from the snake. Gazo backed up a couple of steps.

Anna didn't acknowledge the movement, but from the slight quirk of her mouth Cadel knew she had seen them.

"What's so special about that snake anyway?" Doris asked.

Anna didn't answer, but instead ran her fingers along the snakes sides. She wrapped them under what looked like a loose flap of shedding skin and pulled out the snakes wings.

They were a perfectly matched pair, long and bat like. They were translucent, and had the same color and pattern as the rest of the snake, which was why Cadel hadn't spotted them immediately. They looked really fragile.

Anna let go of the wings. They fluttered twice before folding to lie flat against the snake's body.

"Good morning." Thaddeus said from behind Cadel.

Cadel didn't see Anna very much. Sure, she was in all his required classes. Basic lying (Why no officer, I'm not performing any illegal experiments. Wings, you say? Snakes don't have wings. You _saw_ them? Officer, being drunk on duty will get you fired, you have to know this. You're not drunk? But your hallucinating. Snakes don't have wings. What does the time of day have to do with anything? Officer, people get drunk at nine in the morning. It happens. Sometimes.), pure evil (I really don't see what this had to do with genetic manipulation. We're not designing consciousness, after all. No, but I'll keep in mind next time I want to design an evil mouse.), and forgery (Of course this license is legitimate, officer. See, it has my name and license number on it. A seal? Of course there's a seal. You just can't see it. Have you ever thought about getting glasses, officer?).

But besides that, she was mainly up in the labs the entire time, the way he was in Hardware Heaven. Abraham complained more than once about how she was always hogging the microscope.

"It's weird." He commented more than once. "I peeked once while her back was turned, and it wasn't animal chromosomes she was looking at. It was human. But… different. Like the DNA had been tampered with." He shook his head.

They all looked as Anna walked into the refractory. For once she didn't have her snake draped around her neck. It had really become a common sight, to see Anna walking down the hall with the corn snake twined around her arm or wrapped around her shoulders.

Anna settled down at the table without getting any of the greasy food the institute provided. She pulled a container out of her backpack. Cadel didn't have to guess what was inside. It was the same thing she had every day. Some type of seafood, either shrimp or fish. She had never answered when asked about it. She simply shrugged.

Cadel noticed the twins were peering at her intensely.

"How was your shower today?" Jem asked sweetly.

"Weird." Anna responded. The twin's eyes lit up and they giggled. "My towel had some weird powder on it. So I switched it for one of yours." The twins froze. They looked at their arms and checked their stomach, revealed by their tops. Ni leapt up with a cry. They could all the bright red rash forming across her skin. She glared at Anna. Anna sat chewing her shrimp calmly, meeting her furious stare with a calm look. Ni stormed from the room.

Cadel wasn't really surprised that the twins had tried to poison Anna or something like that. Of everyone in their group, Anna's sarcasm and attitude chaffed the twins the most.

The others left, one by one, until it was only Cadel and Anna at the table.

"What was that?" Cadel asked. He was fishing, he knew. No matter how much he tried to unravel Anna's personality for his equation, she still remained a mystery.

"Slow acting irritant. They put it on my towel during my shower." Anna shook her head. " They really didn't think I would notice." She snorted.

"How did you know?" Cadel insisted.

Anna grinned slowly. "That's for me to know, and you not to know." She left.

Cadel sat back slowly. Shewas hiding something. It was the little things that added up. She constantly avoided the sprinklers when they went off regularly. She was secretive about her work, Abraham had told him, always hiding her notes and taking them with her when she left for the night. And now this. He had seen the bottle of powder sticking out of Jem's bag. It had been white, the same color as the institute issued towels. There was no way she could have seen it. So how did she know?

And more importantly, what was she hiding?

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Review _please_. I really want to know was you think.

And remember, this is only part one.


	3. Anna's History part 2

_More on Anna. This is still before the first chapter. It kind of jumps around a little. _

**Disclaimer:** No, I do not own Evil Genius.

Anna's History: Part 2

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Cadel got so caught up in his work that, well, he forgot about Anna. He found the sweep going through his files and began his spying on the staff of the institute. Weeks passed.

It was a memo that he saw on Terry's server, about Anna hiding some of her work that reminded him about the mysterious girl.

So he hacked the files, finding that she entered the labs at three on the dot every afternoon and left four hours later. So on one of his free afternoons he waited until Terry ran out the door to respond to a summons from Thaddeus.

Anna apparently had the same idea. He had just slipped into the hall way when she poked her head out of one of the doors and looked up and down the hall. Cadel ducked into a corner and waited for a few breathless seconds. He footsteps turned away from the door. He hurried forward, running in a crouch. There were windows along the hall that showed what was happening in the rooms. Anna had drawn the curtain across the window of the lab she was working in, but the door was partially open.

Anna was standing at one of the lab tables, perpendicular to him so he could see everything she was doing. Her sleeve closest to him was rolled up to her shoulder.

She used a alcohol swab to clean off her shoulder. Anna picked up a bottle sitting in front of her on the counter. It was filled with a thick, red substance that looked like blood. It had a label on it, but Cadel couldn't see what was written on it from this distance.

She stared at it for the longest time. Her lips formed soft words. _Please. Please work._

Anna picked up a syringe lying on the counter and tuned the bottle upside down. She filled the thin syringe halfway and pressed the tip into the skin of her upper arm. Anna emptied the syringe into her bloodstream.

Anna opened a thick book and scribbled down some notes. She turned to the back of the book, where Cadel could see the pages had been glued together and hollowed out. Anna put the bottle in the hollow space and closed the book, tucking in in a bag. She dropped the syringe in a hazardous waste bucket and walked toward the door. Cadel barely had time to scramble out of the way before she walked into the hall.

What was she doing? Was she experimenting on herself, like Abraham was? Or was it something simpler, like a new type of drug? Or was she just stupid and crazy?

All he knew was that whatever had been in the syringe had looked suspiciously like blood.

Anna was at lunch the next day, and the one after that, and the one after that. There wasn't any change in her appearance, though she looked a little happier every day.

"What's with you?" One of the twins asked. Anna just shook her head and offered them some of her school bought salad. They refused with a giggle. They also left quickly after Anna switched Jem's salad with hers without taking a bite of the original.

But she didn't seem any different. Cadel sometimes noticed bandages around her arm. They appeared once a week before vanishing the next day. At lunch one day Abraham complained about her whistling as she checked something in the microscope.

Cadel was still curious. What had she been doing in the lab? She still ate fish, and still managed to avoid all the twins attempts to poison her. In fact, he remembered her sniffing her salad the day Jem had slipped something into it. What was going on?

He got an answer, of sorts.

They were leaving their basic lying when there was another explosion. This one rocked the room slightly, and, of course, set off the sprinklers. Anna had been passing through one of the spots where water from multiple sprinklers met. She shrieked as the water soaked her and nearly ran from the room. Cadel poked his head out the door and saw her trip as she rounded the corner. One of her shoes was lying on the floor, and something brown was wrapped around her foot. She pulled her foot around the corner before her could get a better glimpse of whatever it was. Cadel ran after her, pausing to scoop up the shoe before he rounded the corner just as one of the classroom doors swung shut. Cadel grabbed the handle and pushed the door open. He really didn't want to intrude, but she looked like she had been pulling herself along the floor after she had fallen. She could be hurt.

"Don't.." He heard Anna's voice as he pushed open the door. But it was too late to stop. He had seen her.

"Well, don't just stand there. Close the door!" Anna snapped at him. She sounded furious. And somewhat resigned.

Cadel did as she said, but he wasn't really thinking about it. All he could think about was her tail.

It was a seal's tail, covered in dark brown fur. The flippers seemed longer than they normally would bee, and the tail didn't have the usual thickness of a seal. But, then again, Cadel didn't have that much knowledge about seals.

"Well?" Anna's voice broke through his astonishment. "Are you done gawking? Because you can shut your mouth now." Cadel closed his jaw with a snap.

"You did this? To yourself.?"

"NO!" She said, indignant. "Who do you think I am, Abraham? This kind of manipulation can't be done at my age. It has to be done during development."

Cadel frowned. Development? "Your father?"

"Well, it sure as heck wasn't my _mother_. Women don't do this sort of thing to their own children." Now she was resentful.

"But…why?"

"he had this crazy notion that all land was going to sink into the sea and humanity would only survive if there was a race of elite seal people to continue the race."

"Really?"

"NO. Who would be that stupid? I have no clue why he did it. You don't tell a rat why it has to run a maze." She was really upset. Her sarcasm level had gone up a notch or twenty.

Now it made sense. Her sense would have been better than theirs, which was why she had managed to avoid being poisoned. She would have smelled the chemicals in her food or on her clothing. It explained her obsession with fish. But why was she being so secretive, running off before her tail came out, supposedly from the water. Why didn't he know this already. It would have been in her files, wouldn't it have?

"The Institute doesn't know." He said.

She glared at him. "And they're not going to find out, are they?" She asked in a deadly voice. He shook his head quickly. Her face softened and She stretched, wincing as she did.

"What's wrong?" He asked, noticing her look of pain.

"Having the skeletal structure of your legs broken down hurts a little." She said like it was obvious.

"A little?"

"Ok, it hurts a lot. Get me a towel, won't you?"

It was nice to have a friend who could actually keep up with him. Not on the same level as Kay-Lee, but better than Gazo. Anna had a deep knowledge of medicine and a better idea of human drama than he did. So when he decided to bring down the institute from the inside it was a good resource to use.

Terry was one of the wild cards in his scheme. He never spent any time in the lebs, so consequently he knew nothing about the man. But Anna would know. After Terry left one day he took the elevator up to the labs to find Anna. He walked in just as she was filling another syringe with what looked to be the last of the red liquid.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"Fixing the mess my father left behind him." She forced a bubble of air out of the tip of the needle.

Cadel sighed. It could be so annoying that Anna never gave a direct answer if she could avoid it.

He was about to ask a more pointed question when she interrupted him.

"Why do you think I came to the Axis Institute? It wasn't to make more flying snakes, though it would be fun to terrorize all the ophidiophobics of the world."

"The what of the world?"

"Ophidiophobics. People who are afraid of snakes. No. You see, recombinant DNA is a tricky thing. It doesn't always behave the way you expect it to. It has quirks."

"What's your quirk?"

"You mean besides turning into a half seal mixed with a shark?" She asked with a smile. It faded instantly. "My DNA is ageing three times a fast as normal DNA." She said.

"You mean…"

"My life expectancy is cut by two thirds? Exactly. So I'd live to about thirty."

"Can't you do anything?"

Her smile returned. "I did. I came here to be able to use one of the most advanced labs in the world and to have professional advice. This," She tapped the empty bottle. "Is my blood, with a few changes. I've been adding it to my bloodstream over the past few months to change my DNA. And according to the test results, it worked." She was beaming, absolutely ecstatic. Who wouldn't be, gaining sixty years of life.

"Can I see?" Cadel asked. Anna tossed him the bottle before doing a little victory dance. Cadel glanced at the label. EXPERIMANTAL LONGEVITY GENE E.

"So, can you tell me a little about Terry?" He asked nonchalantly.

"Sure. What do you want to know?" She answered his questions easily enough.

"Thanks."

"Why do you want to know anyway?" Anna asked with narrowed eyed. He hated to say it, but he quelled under her bicolored stare and told her.

"Your going to take the Institute apart at the seams." She summarized. She tilted her head to the side and stared at him until he was uncomfortable. Finally she shrugged. "I don't care. Besides, this place would fall apart before long anyway." She shook her head as she began to neaten up the lab. "You can't get a group of mal-intentioned smart people together for too long or things start to go bad. You would think he would know that by now."

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_if you want to know what happens you have to review. You want to know what Anna's idea is from the first chapter. _

_*hypnotic voice*_

_Y__ou want to know..._

_You want to know..._

_You will review...._


	4. Fly

Back to the present. This picks up where the first chapter left off.

**Disclimer: **I do not own Evil Genius.

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"We're going to do _what_?" Cadel yelped, almost forgetting to be quiet.

"I know. Ingenious, isn't it?"

"Why do we have to do that?" Cadel asked, just short of a panic attack.

"It's the only way to get them to leave you alone completely." Anna said in a matter of fact voice. "If they think you're dead, then they won't have a reason to be looking for you. You can disappear, go to a different country, get surgery to alter the way you look and they wont suspect a thing. Basically, they wont be looking for you, so they wont find you."

It made sense. He had to admit that. It just seemed so daunting.

"So, how am I going to kill myself?"

"Well, we do have a nice cliff handy-"

"Oh no. Un-un. No way."

"Come on, Cadel. The ocean's at the bottom, so I can grab you once you hit the water. You won't drown." She said tartly.

"That cliff has to be at least a hundred feet tall!"

"That makes it all the more convincing that you're dead. Besides, it's only fifty. I measured."

"It's still a fifty foot cliff!"

"Get a grip, Cadel!" Anna snapped through the mouthpiece. "I thought you wanted to get away from them. Now," She continued in a slightly softer voice with no less bite. "If you're too chicken to take the plunge I suggest you find a better way to fly the coup."

"Pun intended?"

"What do you think?" Anna was still mad. Cadel waited a minute for her to cool off.

"Are there rocks at the bottom?" He asked cautiously.

"Well…." She trailed off. A feeling of dread grew in his stomach.

"Some?"

"A few." She responded vaguely.

He shook his head before he remembered she couldn't see him. "I don't think so." He said. "There has to be a better way."

"Fine. Contact me if you when you're ready." The earpiece went silent. Cadel sighed and shut it off at his end. She could be so stubborn sometimes. He liked the idea, he just didn't like the method. He wasn't jumping off any cliffs unless he absolutely had no other option. There had to be another way.

_Time shift_

Cadel waited until Wilfrda had left before he slipped his shoes back on and brushed the earpiece to bring it to life. He was back in Curramulla. Maybe there was no other option.

"Did you miss my company so much you had to come back?" Anna asked in a honeysweet voice.

"Do you have a sarcastic response for everything?" He snapped back. Sometimes Anna could be so annoying.

"Sarcasm, Cadel, is an _art form_. There's something for everyone." She responded in a lofty tone. "So, you ready to learn how to fly?" Cadel sighed and stood up. His head spun sickeningly.

"Are you ok?" Anna must have hear his breathing speed up.

"Fine. I'll be better once I get out of here." He slipped out of his room and into the hall.

He had almost made it down the staircase when the living room door burst open, spilling light into the dark hall and making Cadel shield his eyes.

"_Elspeth?_" Thaddeus hissed. "But you're dead! I saw you-" He stopped suddenly, but it was too late.

Cadel's blood ran cold. "You killed her," The words barely managed to get out of his mouth.

"_Cadel?_"

"You killed my mother." It was all so clear. Cadel had heard the hatred and fear and anger in Thaddeus's voice.

"Cadel, my god. You _escaped_?" Thaddeus stepped forward.

"Get away from me!"

"Listen-"

Cadel turned and bolted up the stairs.

"Cadel! Get out!" Anna's anxious voice said in his ear. But he couldn't. The patio next to the cliff was downstairs. He would have to pass Thaddeus. Just then the psychologist's hand closed over his arm in a steel grip.

"Let go!" Cadel cried. He lashed out, dazed with fear and the remainder of a headache pounding at the back of his skull. Anna swore in his ear.

"I gotta go. Diversion. I'll be at the bottom of the cliff. Hurry." She said in a rush. He heard the slap of feet on wood and them a whoosh as she tore the comminucator off her head. Then it went silent.

"Cadel-" Thaddeus's voice snapped him back.

"_I _know what happened!" He cried. He heaved, struggling to get away. He kicked and clawed, exploding against months of fear, lying and manipulation. "You were afraid, so you killed her! You _scum_! You _murderer_! You've made me a _murderer_!"

"Shh. Calm down."

"NO! You-" Cadel was cut off as an explosion rocked the house. The floor bucked, throwing them all off balance. Thaddues's grip loosened and Cadel jerked free, stumbling down the stairs and dashing for the door. He could hear Thaddeus behind him, catching up. Cadel put his head down and ran faster. A second explosion, an aftershock of the first, almost knocked him off his feet. Luckily he had had both feet on the ground.

There was a thud from behind him as he darted outside. Thaddeus must have been in midst ride when the aftershock hit, and been thrown to the ground. Cadel saw the black emptyness of the cliff a few yards away, it was zooming closer as her ran.

"Cadel, STOP!" He heard Thaddeus yell. There was real fear in the psycologist's voice. Footsteps pounded from behind him.

The edge of the cliff, looking like the end of the world, yawned in front of him. Cadel shook his head like he was shaking tears out of his eyes and pretended to trip, falling over the cliff and into empty air.

"CADEL!" Screamed a voice from behind him as the world dropped away. In the dark it was almost as if he way floating. The sea melded with the dark sky to form an encompassing blackness. Only the air rushing past him told him he was moving at all. It was almost peaceful. He felt lighter than air.

Suddenly there was a glint from below him. Star light reflected off the rough water below, showing how close the water was. How close the rocks were. They were scattered all over the water below, dark voids ringed by white foam. A particularly big one loomed up below him. Cadel screamed as the water rushed up and the rock dodged to his right. He missed it by less than two feet.

The water was hard s he hit it, feet first. It closed over his head with a slap that hurt his already sore head. Bubbles streamed out of his mouth as the impact knocked the air from his lungs.

The water was dark like the air had been. The velvet darkness muffled all his senses. Cadel was utterly lost. And his air was running out.

Suddenly slim, strong arms, white in the darkness, licked around his chest. Something pulsed behind him, and then he was moving forward. Water battered his eyes as he passed through it, forcing them closed. Seconds later his head burst through the water and he took a deep breath, starved for air.

He opened his eyes to more blackness. This time, not even the stars were visible above his head. The slap of the water echoed all around him.

"Hey." Anna whispered. Her voice came from right in front of him, but echoed all around like the water. They must be in a cave.

He was so relieved that for a minute all he could do was breath. Then he said the first thing that came to his mind.

"_Some rocks_?!" He burst out. It had looked like the coast had been checkerboard with them.

"A few." Anna laughed.

"Where are we?" He asked. Red spots were beginning to play along the edges of his vision from lack of light.

"In a cave created by the explosion." Anna chuckled. "You should have seen the way the cliff trembled. It was awesome!" Something nudged him in the rids. He suspected it was her elbow. "I told you someday you might need to jury rig an explosion." Cadel remembered that.

"What did you use?" He asked.

"An alkali metal. And the ocean." Anna responded with glee in her voice.

"Anna, are you a pyromaniac?" Cadel asked.

"Only in the mornings." He could hear her grin. "Got your breath back?"

Cadel nodded before he remembered she wouldn't be able to see.

"Good. Squeeze my wrist when you start to run out of air. I've had seal's longs for my entire life, so I don't know how long regular people can hold their breath."

"How did you know I nodded? It's pitch black in here."

"Seal's eyes, remember? Made for oceans at night." Her arms locked around him again and he took a deep breath before they slid gently under the water.

Anna moved fast in the water. She also went deep. Cadel could feel the weight of water above them pushing down. It squeezed the air from his lungs, giving them less travel time before he has to squeeze the wrist that went around his chest. As soon as his finger encircled Anna's slim wrist he could feel the water lighten and they breached the surface.

Cadel looked back and saw they were a good distance from Curramulla. The house had shrunken and he doubted they could be seen from the house.

"Is he still by the cliff?" he asked Anna. She raised her head farther above the water. She shook her head, spraying his face with seawater. Then she laughed.

"He's too busy with the police." Cadel looked again and noticed the pricks of headlights against the walls. "Good thing the blast destroyed his boat." She grinned. "Did you feel the second explosion? That was when the gas in his boat caught fire. The thing must have been filled to the brim." She chuckled.

Cadel wondered how she had managed to create such and explosion with an alkali metal and seawater. Then again, he noticed, she hadn't mentioned _which_ metal she had used, or how much of it. He guessed it hadn't been any of the smaller ones.

It took them two more trips to the surface to reach Anna's boat. The sleek catamaran was bigger than he had thought. Probably around fifty feet from the front to the back. He didn't see a bulge of a cabin. He climbed up the ladder, noting the tall mast and swinging boom. They looked like empty skeletons against the sky. The were hatches above each of the two hulls.

Anna had to pull herself aboard. After her trip in the ocean, she would have the brown tail for a long time. She had often complained about how much water her thick fur seemed to hold.

Anna told him to look in one of the hatches for a towel as she slid across the deck and stopped in front of the wheel. Cadel noticed it had been lowered into a well, so she could comfortably use it even sitting on the floor as a seal.

There was a growl from the back of the boat as Anna started the motor. Cadel was opening one of the hatches to reveal a small room with a hammock strung up when Anna called his name. He whirled to see a light fixed on the front of their boat. The source was rapidly approaching.

"Police boat." Anna called up. Cadel's heart settled. It sped up again as Anna slid away from the wheel and pulled herself toward the edge of the deck.

"Where are you going?" He cried.

"I can't let them see me like this." She said. " You'll be fine with the police, but I'm not going to give them a chance to put me in a lab. Good luck, Cadel." She called as she slid into the waves licking the boat without a splash. Cadel rushed to grab the wheel before the catamaran could veer into the police boat.

Cadel put on a relieved smile as he waved and called for help. As he saw the policeman's face his heart lifted. He was safe.

* * *

And that's the end. I don't think I could go into Genius squad without ripping the whole plot to pieces, and it's a very nice plot.

So tell me what you think. Please? *puppy dog eyes*


End file.
